Former Sen. Al D’Amato (R. N.Y.) has demonstrated a single clear rule for anyone going through a nasty divorce or custody fight: do not use your estranged wife’s hospital room to vent your anger as she begs you to stop. A video was released by D’Amato’s wife Katuria Smith that showed D’Amato raving at her as she laid in bed recovering from neck surgery. Warning: the video and discussion involves foul language.

D’Amato, 80, paces on the video screaming “You do two shits and a holler for me. I’m an old f—ing man you want to get rid of. And I understand it. Go fuck yourself.” It got worse from there. The video will now be introduced in the proceedings to support Smith’s claim that D’Amato is verbally abusive. The trial is slated to start April 11 and end in the middle of the month.

Divorce can make people crazy and mean. I recall reading an interview with one of the heavy hitting divorce attorneys, Laura Wasser, in which she said that she held herself, and tried to hold her clients, to the standard of divorcing in such a way that no one hates each other. She tries to maintain the overall goal of a cordial coparenting relationship, and as little stress to the kids as possible. Until the Johnny Depp roller coaster divorce, she really did try to make divorce a clean exit rather than a blood sport.

I’ve never been through a divorce, so I’m only guessing at how unbelievably painful this is for all involved. Everyone knows someone who’s gone through it.

I can’t watch the video until I get to better WiFi, but I assume it’s an angry guy yelling at his captive audience wife after who knows what led up to this. This is sad. I believe that it’s also supposed to be good advice to let your lawyer talk for you, rather than get into any heated exchanges.

These two had better figure out how to co-parent together. Unless there is serious abuse, they are going to have to heel-toe it through birthdays, holidays, maybe a wedding…Since they created a child together, they should learn how to coexist cordially so that they don’t ruin every family event for the rest of their lives with their tension.

I was able to watch about a minute and a half of the exchange in the video.

It appears that Mr. D’Amato kept going on about how his ex wanted to get rid of him, and that he felt worthless. Then I heard her keep crying at him not to yell at her, when he paced back and forth at the foot of her bed, on the phone. He sounded rude and irritated and persecuted, but he didn’t say he was going to kill her, or she was good for nothing, or anything other than she abandoned him and dang it all he wanted to take a kid to a recital. I was expecting something scary. People can be viciously cruel, put someone under their thumb through repeated emotional manipulation and abuse, and degrade someone’s sense of worth until they are paralyzed to act in their own best interest. The part of his rant that I heard was all about how he felt like she didn’t care about him, and was throwing him away because he was an old man. Wives across America have said similar things to their cheating husbands who left them for a younger woman. Granted, this was a pointless declaration and should not have occurred in a hospital. Full disclosure – I couldn’t watch the entire video, so maybe I missed something critical.

If they were getting a divorce, he shouldn’t have come to her hospital room for any reason other than to drop off lunch and a get well card. Let the lawyers argue. You get divorced so you don’t have to fight anymore, presumably. If she really did use him and abandon him, then what did he propose to do? Make a woman who didn’t care about him feel bad about it? Vent? His statements had no purpose. What was it that they say? If someone has hurt you, don’t go stand in front of them so they can do it again…to your face.

D’Amato is a verbal bully, video done, too bad wife is a whiner who should have rung for a nurse and had him thrown out, right after getting the video. Yes, he was probably set up, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t verbally abusive.

He’s always been a terribly vulgar man. He separated from his first wife around about 1985, when he was fifty. He’s had a reputation for a long time in New York as someone who screwed a lot of girls. No decent woman would have touched him. I’ll wager like most warring couples, their marriage has social utility because they’re making two people miserable instead of four.

Lithium? Loaded shotguns being waved around the house? The sound of meowing cats reverberating around the room? I didn’t realize they let cats into hospital rooms nowadays. It must be a “service” cat because Katuria obviously has special needs. Would her nickname be “Kat,” by any chance? Never-mind. Now, however, the issue is not about Al nor Katuria. It’s about the kids and how to best provide for their futures.

My faith leads me to follow Christ’s compassion for the vulnerable. While there is injustice and it can be changed, my comfort from a state of peace should not lead me to silence. I should be led to confront those who bestride my fellow man.

Happy Easter, we can hope that the religious read the teachings of the conservatives, written by false prophets (Weyrich training manual posted at Theocracy Watch- Weyrich was the founder of Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and the architect of the religious right political movement.) The manual states among other things that falsehoods are necessary. One of the Ten Commandments prohibits bearing false witness.
After reading the manual, Christians in the spirit of their King, will proselytize his true message.

Linda – I am agnostic and follow Rules for Radicals. I can lie all I want. However, you lie all the time, too. What are your Christian bona fides? From what religious platform do you speak for Christians? I’ll show you mine if you will show me yours. 😉

Because you say something about someone like me it does not make it true. Lies are a deliberate intent to mislead. I don’t lie when I express a view based on the facts I have assembled and I don’t think that you lie. Most others who comment here are not liars (the conspiracy theorists who are paid for the schtick, yes, they are liars).
You, I, nor anyone needs a bona fide to hope and speculate that people will read Weyrich’s manual and, if in possession of a conscience, religious or not, will find it offensive and tell others.

Linda – you posit that Weyrich violates Christian precepts. If that is so, you must show that you have Christian bona fides to make that statement. I posit that Weyrich is hoisting you on your own petard.

When this 10 year old is in high school, the senator will be in his mid to upper 80’s. Yikes! Can you you imagine the crap this kid is going to get away with? I went to a Catholic high school. In one of my classes the nun teaching the class was approximately 70 years old. She caught one student giving another student the middle finger. So she asked him what he was doing. He quickly replied that he was just wishing a fellow classmate good luck on the test they were about to take. During the good sister’s next class guess how she wishes them good luck. Senior citizens should not be raising children.

I. Bob,…
– Did the nun figure out she’d been had? And if so, what was her reaction when she did?
The crew of the USS Pueblo, captured by the North Koreans 50 years ago, extended their middle fingers in group photos that the North Koreans released to the international news media.
They asked what it meant, and the sailors told them that “It’s a Hawaiian good luck sign”.
The Koreans finally figured out that the sailors weren’t wishing their captors “good luck”.
The Koreans stepped up mistreatment of their captives after that, and I don’t think they released any more photos to the media.

I see my friend’s father every couple of weeks. He is 101 now and was holding up pretty well until he hit about 98. My father died when I was 11. All those things that TIN’s father did with him, my father did not do with me. My neighbor’s father did it with him though. My father was an intellectual, although he did hunt and fish, I was never invited.

Another wanna-be “actress” pretending to sound like a victim, but comes across as a whining, pathetic shrew. Maybe somebody should introduce D’Amato’s wife to Stephanie Clifford. They’d make good “bosom” buddies.

But, there is a 30 year age difference between the two. You would think at age 70 or so, he would have learned his lesson and stayed away from the girlies. Sheeesh, he was married to his first wife for 35 years (1960-1995) so it isn’t like he didn’t know what he was getting into. He had two more kids, so that is good. But why put yourself thru all the pain and Hell of a relationship at age 70?

Why can’t people learn??? Two or so relationships was all it took for me, and I learned my lesson. Like at age 23. I guess some people just can’t stand being alone or something.

If I were a juror it would make a negative impression on me, because it is so obviously staged. She set him up, which doesn’t look good for her. He’s a foul mouthed old New Yorker, and nothing he did or said is all that bad by NY standards. She’s a scheming gold digger, and she wants to dump him but keep half his money. He finally figured out that he was used, and that’s why he’s mad.

She set him up, which doesn’t look good for her. He’s a foul mouthed old New Yorker, and nothing he did or said is all that bad by NY standards.

You have a distorted understanding of how people behave in New York. As suburban Italians go, d’Amato is extremely unusual. New York has a terrible political culture and people are willing to cast ballots for characters they’d never associate with in meatworld.

Al D’Amato is 80 years old. 80! And he wants custody of a 10 year old boy! For what, so the kid can fetch a fresh pair of Depends for him? I agree that women on welfare poppin’ out mutts by assorted baby daddies are a scourge on society, but none of these women are having kids at age 70.

People would be highly critical of a woman who used science to give birth at age 70, but you don’t hear the same criticism against old men who father children at the same age. Which means to me that society is saying that fathers don’t really matter; that as long as he can pay the bills it doesn’t matter if he is physically incapable of having an active and involved role in the child’s life until he or she reaches adulthood. And that’s really shortchanging the child. My dad was 27 when I was born and I have great memories of playing ball, hunting, fishing, camping, teaching me to drive and so forth. These children of geriatrics will never know that, and they will have to deal with their father’s infirmity and death when they are still adolescents or very young adults.